AA Edit | Rahul’s CPM-BJP ‘Deal’ Claim Baffles Everybody

The repeated statements of former Congress president and the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi that the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) in Kerala is facing the Assembly election after striking a secret deal with the BJP against the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) have the potential to undermine the very legitimacy of the INDIA bloc, which fights the BJP at the national level.

Mr Gandhi has produced no hard evidence that can point to a secret deal between the Communists and the saffron family, sworn ideological enemies. He would argue that the Central agencies have been hounding him for several years and even questioned him for hours on end in certain cases but have spared Kerala’s CPI(M) chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan because of the “deal”. He would suggest that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s silence about the gold theft in the hill shrine of Sabarimala is another indicator of the existence of such a “deal”.

It may be remembered that the Congress started the campaign against the Aam Aadmi Party and its then Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal in the Delhi excise policy case. Mr Kejriwal, a serving chief minister, as well as several of his Cabinet colleagues spent months in jail before being acquitted in the case, for there was no evidence against them. It is unclear if Mr Gandhi would want the Kerala CM also to spend some time in jail to prove that his party has no deal with the BJP.

It is not that the Enforcement Directorate (ED) did not make an attempt to trap Mr Vijayan in the gold smuggling case registered some five years ago but could not find a thread to connect him to the crime. The ED ended up with a bloody nose in court when it issued a notice to CPI(M) leader and former Kerala finance minister Thomas Isaac, for the Central agency had no answer to the court which questioned the rationale of the notice.

A couple of CPI(M) leaders were arrested in relation with the Sabarimala case, and the party owes an answer to the people for their acts of omission and commission. Mr Gandhi has every right to make the CPI(M) accountable in the case. At the same time, the Congress has offered no credible explanation about the presence of the other accused in the case along with Congress MPs at 10, Janpath, meeting Congress leader Sonia Gandhi. While the CPI(M) would not link Mrs Gandhi to the alleged thieves, it would ask Mr Gandhi to explain why the Congress leaders accompanied them during their visit to the Congress leader’s house. Mr Modi’s silence in the case can be interpreted in whichever way you want; it cannot be the proof of a CPI(M)-BJP deal. In short, Mr Gandhi offers no concrete evidence of a deal and he comes up with erroneous logic to back up his claim.

Assembly elections are fought and won the hardest way, and Mr Gandhi cannot be blamed for using the sharpest weapons against his party’s political enemies in the states concerned. But to accuse his own party’s allies on the national platform formed to fight the BJP of being in cahoots with the same saffron party defies logic. If Mr Gandhi is serious about his allegation, then he should start the process of evicting the Left parties from the INDIA bloc. If not, then he should play the political game within the contours defined by the national political goals of his party and make public statements accordingly. He cannot play a double game.